The origin of life is one of the fundamental questions in science. Eschenmoser proposed the "glyoxylate scenario", in which plausible abiotic synthesis pathways were suggested to be compatible with the constraints of prebiotic chemistry. In this proposal, the stem compound is HCN. In this work, we explore the "glyoxylate scenario" through several syntheses of HCN polymers, paying particular attention to the role of the aqueous aerosols, together with statistical methods, as a step to elucidate the synthetic problem of the origin of life. The soluble and insoluble HCN polymers synthetized were analyzed by GC-MS. We identified, for the first time, glyoxylic acid in these polymers, together with some constituents of the reductive tricarboxylic acid cycle, amino acids and several N-heterocycles. The findings presented herein, as the first global approach to the "glyoxylate scenario", give full effect to this hypothesis and prove that aqueous aerosols could play an important role in this plausible scene of the origin of life.

The genesis of life on Earth is a hypothesis of evolutionary science that can be, at least partially, tested experimentally. The prebiotic synthesis of cofactors or coenzymes is a poorly explored issue, likely because their formation under plausible prebiotic conditions is not clear. In this sense, it has been proposed that the cofactors are "molecular fossils" of an early phase of life. In contrast, Eschenmoser and Loewenthal suggested a prebiotic hydrocyanic origin of cofactor building blocks. In the present paper, the formation of a set of pterins from cyanide polymerizations is demonstrated, showing that the main structure of some cofactors can be prebiotically formed. Indeed, it was observed that aqueous aerosols additionally increase the relative composition for pterins in the insoluble NH4CN polymers synthesized. The novel identification of pterins in NH4CN polymers, together with the previous detection of other important biomonomers, indicates that cyanide polymerizations were essential in the early state of prebiotic chemistry.

The conditions for the potential abiotic formation of organic compounds from inorganic precursors have great implications for our understanding of the origin of life on Earth and for its possible detection in other environments of the Solar System. It is known that aerosol-interfaces are effective at enhancing prebiotic chemical reactions, but the roles of salinity and pH have been poorly investigated to date. Here, we experimentally demonstrate the uniqueness of alkaline aerosols as prebiotic reactors that produce an undifferentiated accumulation of a variety of multi-carbon biomolecules resulting from high-energy processes (in our case, electrical discharges). Using simulation experiments, we demonstrate that the detection of important biomolecules in tholins increases when plausible and particular local planetary environmental conditions are simulated. A greater diversity in amino acids, carboxylic acids, N-heterocycles, and ketoacids, such as glyoxylic and pyruvic acid, was identified in tholins synthetized from reduced and neutral atmospheres in the presence of alkaline aqueous aerosols than that from the same atmospheres but using neutral or acidic aqueous aerosols.

Enantiopure chiral organic dications based on two l-prolinol units linked by para-xylene units effectively structure-directs the crystallization of several zeolites including beta, while the meta-xylene derivative is a much less efficient director.